With Warlords of Draenor's launch, WoW's subscriber numbers have shot up to over 10 million! You can read more in Blizzard's press release below:

Blizzard

WORLD OF WARCRAFT SURPASSES 10 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS AS WARLORDS OF DRAENOR™ LAUNCH BEGINS

New expansion achieves day-one sell-through of more than 3.3 million copies

IRVINE, Calif.-- November 19, 2014--On November 13, millions of Azeroth's champions enlisted for the war against the Iron Horde with the launch of World of WarcraftR: Warlords of DraenorTM, the fifth expansion to the world's #1 subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game.* Blizzard Entertainment today announced that as of the first 24 hours of the expansion's availability, more than 3.3 million copies had sold-through&dagger; and the game's global subscriber base had passed 10 million, with growth across all major regions.The release last week in North America, Latin America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia brought some technical and demand-related issues that made the first few days especially challenging for many players. To address the issues, Blizzard worked around the clock to roll out a series of updates and increase realm capacity across the board, and performance has remained solid since then. The expansion launched today (November 20 local time) in South Korea, mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau."We're thrilled that so many players jumped in to play Warlords of Draenor on day one and are having a great time with the new content," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We poured a lot of hard work and passion into this expansion, and we appreciate all the kind words from players and the overwhelming support they continue to show for World of Warcraft."In Warlords of Draenor, Garrosh Hellscream has escaped through the Dark Portal to help forge the orc clans of old into the terrifying war machine that is the Iron Horde, intent on the destruction of Azeroth. Players must mount a desperate charge into the orc homeworld of Draenor and fight alongside and against legendary characters from WarcraftR's history to bring down the warlords before all is lost beneath the tides of iron. As Azeroth's heroes explore the savage world of Draenor, they'll build and manage a mighty Garrison, a customizable stronghold that grows with them on their journey; reach new heights of power and unlock bonuses on their way to the new level cap of 100; fight the opposing faction for control of Ashran, a huge and dynamic PvP zone; and take on a wide array of Dungeons, Raids, Battlegrounds, Challenge Modes, and more. Warlords of Draenor is available now in a digital and physical Standard Edition (SRP: $49.99 USD) as well as a Digital Deluxe Edition (SRP: $69.99), which includes in-game bonus items for World of Warcraft and other Blizzard games. The expansion is also available in a retail-exclusive Collector's Edition (SRP: $89.99), which comes equipped with the digital bonus items from the Digital Deluxe Edition as well as a full-color hardcover art book, a behind-the-scenes two-disc Blu-ray/DVD set, a CD soundtrack, and a Warlords of Draenor mouse pad. Players should check their local retailer for details and availability.All versions of the expansion come with one level-90 character boost, making it easier than ever for new and returning players to experience Warlords of Draenor's content alongside their friends and family.&dagger;&dagger; For more information, visit www.warlords.com.Warlords of Draenor has received a Teen rating from the ESRB. In addition to the English version, the expansion is available fully localized into Latin American Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, European Spanish, Italian, Russian, Korean, traditional Chinese, and simplified Chinese.With multiple games in development, Blizzard Entertainment has numerous positions currently available--visit http://jobs.blizzard.com for more information and to learn how to apply.World of Warcraft' s Subscriber DefinitionWorld of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet game room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.

About Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. Best known for blockbuster hits including World of WarcraftTM and the WarcraftTM, StarCraftTM, and DiabloTM franchises, Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. (www.blizzard.com), a division of Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ: ATVI), is a premier developer and publisher of entertainment software renowned for creating some of the industry’s most critically acclaimed games. Blizzard Entertainment’s track record includes nineteen #1 games† and multiple Game of the Year awards. The company’s online-gaming service, Battle.netTM, is one of the largest in the world, with millions of active players.

*More than 10 million subscribers as of November 13, 2014.†Sales and/or downloads, based on internal company records and reports from key distribution partners.††Players upgrading to Warlords of Draenor from World of Warcraft Starter Edition must wait until trial restrictions are removed before character boost becomes available (may take up to 72 hours).Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements: Information in this press release that involves Blizzard Entertainment&#39;s expectations, plans, intentions or strategies regarding the future, including statements about scheduled release dates , are forward-looking statements that are not facts and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause Blizzard Entertainment&#39;s actual future results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements set forth in this release include unanticipated product delays and other factors identified in the risk factors sections of Activision Blizzard’s most recent annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The forward-looking statements in this release are based upon information available to Blizzard Entertainment and Activision Blizzard as of the date of this release, and neither Blizzard Entertainment nor Activision Blizzard assumes any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements believed to be true when made may ultimately prove to be incorrect. These statements are not guarantees of the future performance of Blizzard Entertainment or Activision Blizzard and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, some of which are beyond its control and may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations.

Today we've had some updates on the recent MMR issues, as well as some tweets from Blizzard on gearing.

Wowhead launches Class Guides!

On Friday Wowhead launched guides for every class and spec. Aimed at new level 90s, or players new to a given spec, these are all written by experts in each class. You can check them out at our Class Guides page.

MMR issues hotfix incoming

Blizzard Community Representative Daxxarri responded to player concerns about gaining 0 points of Current Rating following wins in arena:

Daxxarri

We recently implemented a hotfix to address a bug that allowed Personal Ratings to exceed Matchmaking Rating. As a result, some players may notice that they do not gain or lose Personal Rating in the wake of a match. As more matches are played, these ratings will normalize and converge to the correct rating, and Personal Rating will then rise or drop accordingly.

In the meantime, we will continue to monitor the situation and make further adjustments if necessary.

Following several responses expressing dissatisfaction, Senior Community Representative Lore posted in the thread to alert the community of a subsequent hotfix:

Lore

The intent of this change was to fix a bug that was allowing some players to boost their personal rating far above their matchmaking rating. Unfortunately, the change we made inadvertently affected many legitimate players as well, causing them to see a personal rating gain of 0 in some cases.

To correct this, we’ll be relaxing the boundaries at which the system will attempt to limit personal rating gains (or losses) in relation to a player’s individual MMR. Once this hotfix is live, you should once again see ratings gains or losses as normal as long as your personal rating is within 100 points of your individual MMR rating. Note that your own MMR is what matters here, not the average for your team (which is the number displayed at the end of a match).

So I'm assuming after a few games (1-5) this should balance out your MMR with your CR, since it's your personal, not team. And you should be gaining points per game? I haven't played 3's in a few days and I'm itching :D

Once the 100-point buffer is in place, most players should not notice much of a difference (if any) in point gains between how things work now and how they worked a few days ago. For the handful of players that are outside the 100-point boundary, it will take a few games for their ratings to correct themselves, but as long as they weren't doing anything shady it shouldn't take long even in those cases.

We're currently not planning a rating reset, although we are continuing to monitor the situation and will make further adjustments if they prove to be necessary.

We also currently don't have any plans to display personal MMR, but we definitely understand why that can be frustrating and are discussing it.

Today the Blizzard devs explain some of the design philosophies behind changes in Warlords of Draenor, with additional information on Crowd Control and Diminishing Returns changes.

Some racials are getting changed--some that have hit and expertise boosts need to be changed as those stats won't exist, and others are simply too strong.

The item squish is coming because player power has really gotten out of control--Blizzard even made handy graphs showing it!

Abilities are getting removed in Warlords to reduce complexity and bloat--some are passives, others are class-wide abilities that really should be for one spec.

There is too much Crowd Control in the game. Many CC spells are getting removed, disarms are gone, and the number of Diminishing Returns categories are reduced.

After this blog was posted, which mostly covered old information, several Blizzard devs on twitter answered questions from players--revealing new information in the process. We liveblogged the highlights and organized them here because Twitter is pretty messy for this sort of information!

New Racial Information

Technical Game Designer Celestalon also answered more specifics about new racials on his Twitter, such as "Weapon Specialization racials are removed because Hit/Exp are removed." Source:

Dwarf: Lost and Might of the Mountain. Gained Might of the Mountain, a passive which adds 2% Crit Damage. Also... A change to Stoneform: Also removes Magic/Curse. HOWEVER, it still cannot be used while CC'd. (It is still NOT a CC-break) Source

Night Elves: Quickness also increases movement speed by 2% passively. They also got a new passive which is quite unique... (Remember, no more haste breakpoints!) Touch of Elune, a new passive which grants 1% Haste at night, 1% Crit during the day. SourceShadowmeld is unchanged. Source

Abilities and Itemization

Celestalon and Holinka also answered questions on the ability bloat and general ability changes:

Q: Regarding removing CDs, which is likely gonna be cut for Ferals Berserk or Tiger Fury or both? A: Both of those are staying. Tiger's Fury is on the border between feeling like a DPS cooldown and a rotational button. Source

Q: I understand if this is too specific. Re pet-cast CC: Freeze going away? If so, room for a non-CC replacement? A: Water Elemental Freeze is staying. However, there is a minor talent that teaches Squirt a new spell that shares a cooldown with it Source

Blizzard

Development on World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor is progressing well, and we'll soon be ready to enter the first phases of public testing. To help prep you for battle, let’s break down some of the upcoming changes we’re making to stats, abilities, and crowd control for the expansion.

Stat Squish

Character progression is one of the hallmarks of any role-playing game, and naturally that means we're always adding more power for players to acquire. After multiple expansions and content updates, we've reached a point where the numbers for health, damage, and other stats are so big they’re no longer easy for players to grasp. What’s more, a lot of power granularity is tied up in tiers of older content, from Molten Core to Dragon Soul—and while it was once necessary for your character's power to spike up suddenly when you hit level 70, that’s not the case anymore.

In order to bring things down to a more understandable level, we'll be reducing the scale of stats throughout the game and smoothing out those obsolete spikes, so that power scales linearly through questing content from levels 1 to 85. This applies to creatures, spells, abilities, consumables, gear . . . everything. And while that means your numbers for stats and damage are being reduced by a huge amount, the same goes for creatures' health and damage output. For example, a Fireball that previously hit a creature for 450,000 out of his 3,000,000 health (15% of its health) may now hit that same creature for 30,000 out of its 200,000 health (still 15% of its health).

It's important to understand that this isn’t a nerf—in effect, you’ll still be just as powerful, but the numbers that you see will be easier to comprehend. This also won’t reduce your ability to solo old content. In fact, to provide some additional peace of mind, we're implementing further scaling of your power against lower-level targets so that earlier content will be even more accessible than it is now.

We’re also removing all base damage on player spells and abilities and adjusting attack power or spell power scaling as needed, making it so that all specializations will scale at the same rate.

Racial Traits

We want races to have fun and interesting perks, but if some of those traits are too powerful, players may feel compelled to play a specific race even if it’s not really the one they want to play. For example, Trolls' Berserking ability was extremely powerful, and their Beast Slaying passive was either completely irrelevant or tremendously powerful, based on the situation, compared to other racial traits. On the other end of the spectrum, many races had few or no performance-affecting perks. On top of that, a number of racials that currently grant Hit or Expertise will soon need replacing, since those stats are being removed in Warlords of Draenor.

To keep racials more in line with one another, we’ve decided to bring down the couple high outliers, then establish a fair baseline and bring everyone else up to that. We’re accomplishing this by improving old passives, replacing obsolete ones, and adding a few new ones where necessary. Ultimately, our goal is to achieve much better parity among races.

Ability Pruning

Over the years, we've added significantly more new spells and abilities than we've removed, and the game’s complexity has steadily increased. We’re to the point now where players are starting to get overwhelmed, sometimes feeling like they need dozens of keybinds (in a few extreme cases, over a hundred). While the game is loaded with niche abilities that could theoretically be useful in some rare scenario, in reality, many of these are barely used at all—and in some cases, the game would simply be better off without them.

For Warlords of Draenor, we decided that we needed to pare down the number of abilities available to each class and spec in order to remove some of that unnecessary complexity. That means restricting some abilities to certain specs that really need them instead of being class-wide, and outright removing some other abilities. It also includes removing some Spellbook clutter, such as passives that we can merged with other passives or base abilities.

This doesn’t mean that we want to reduce the depth of gameplay or dumb things down. We still want players to face interesting decisions during combat, and we still want skill to matter . . . but we can achieve that without the needless complexity in the game now, and we can remove some of the game’s more convoluted mechanics while maintaining depth and skill variety.

One type of ability that we focused on removing is temporary power buffs (aka "cooldowns"). Removing these also helps achieve one of our other goals, which is to reduce the amount of cooldown stacking in the game. In cases where a class or spec has multiple cooldowns that typically end up getting used together (often in a single macro), we merged them, or removed some of them entirely.

The process of determining which spells and abilities to cut or change is a very complex one—we know that every ability feels vital to someone, and we don't take this process lightly. Even if we ended up cutting your favorite ability, we hope you’ll understand why we did so in the context of our larger goals for the expansion. Ultimately, the point of these changes is to increase players' ability to understand the game, not to reduce gameplay depth.

Crowd Control and Diminishing Returns

One other big takeaway from Mists of Pandaria is that there is currently simply too much crowd control (CC) in the game, especially when it comes to PvP. To address that, we knew that we needed an across-the-board disarmament. Here's a summary of the player-cast CC changes:

Removed Silence effects from interrupts. Silence effects still exist, but are never attached to an interrupt.

Removed all Disarms.

Reduced the number of Diminishing Returns (DR) categories.

All Roots now share the same DR category.

Exception: Roots on Charge-type abilities have no DR category, but have a very short duration instead.

All Stuns now share the same DR category.

All Incapacitate (sometimes called "mesmerize") effects now share the same DR category and have been merged with the Horror DR category.

Removed the ability to make cast-time CC spells instant with a cooldown.

Removed many CC spells entirely, and increased the cooldowns and restrictions on others.

Pet-cast CC is more limited, and in many cases has been removed.

Cyclone can now be dispelled by immunities and Mass Dispel.

PvP trinkets now grant immunity to reapplication of an effect from the same spell cast when they break abilities with persistent effects, like Solar Beam.

Long fears are now shorter in PvP due to the added benefit of a fear changing the players position.

Additionally, we've significantly reduced the number of throughput-increasing cooldowns and procs in order to further reduce burst damage.

Whether your favorite class is losing an ability or taking a hit to its CC potential, we hope this discussion helped you better understand why we’re making these changes. It’s important to remember that other classes will be getting some of their CC removed too. We think this entire package will make exploring Azeroth and PvPing a more enjoyable experience for everyone, and we’re looking forward to having you try them out when we open up the expansion for testing.

In the next Dev Watercooler, we'll explore the changes coming to health and healing in Warlords of Draenor.

With Diablo III out this week, we suspect you haven't totally be focusing on WoW these past few days. We've been having a blast in Sanctuary too, and noticed little details that reminded us of Azeroth along the way, like constantly killing Community Manager Zarhym.

Finding little details like that is a ton of fun, so we put together a list of references between the two games: both references to WoW found in Diablo III, and references to Diablo I and II found in WoW. The Diablo items listed are from our sister site, D3DB: in addition to a database, the site has awesome tools such as a character planner, all the datamined lore journals, and skill calculator (you do know about elective mode, right?).

WoW References in Diablo III

NPCs

Murlocs make an appearance in this amulet: The Murlocket. It even has a murloc icon and the flavor text references the distinctive murloc grumble: Dredged from the murky shores of Lake Chu, this disturbing amulet emits strange sounds when held to one's ear.

In the Mountains: This Act I achievement for exploring the Highlands references the popular Thorim meme from his dialogue at the start of the encounter.

The achievement for acquiring follower tokens, I Got What You Need has always been one of the money-loving Goblin NPC quotes.

Gehennas from Molten Core is the namesake for these pants with fire resistance: Gehennas.

Sarkoth, a quill elite found in an Act I cellar, is a joke on Sarkoth, one of the first mobs Horde players face.

Expansions

Cataclysm. The name is fairly generic, but the flavor text relates to the expansion: A weapon of myth and legend. Some say that to use it is folly—that it will rip the land asunder and boil the oceans.

Weapons

Many crafted weapons share similar names in Diablo and WoW. They're not the most distinctive names, but there could be intentional references. For example:Blackguard, a crafted tanking epic weapon with insane mats back in vanilla: Blackguard, a legendary weapon with defensive stats.

Warmonger, a 2H sword in Diablo III, has an icon that resembles the model of Warmonger in WoW, a wide rectangular sword with a red center.During beta on battle.net, the entry for Doombringer used to be about a legendary weapon called Thunderfury, with flavor text mentioning Al'Akir.Ashelia looted a fist weapon called Pandemonium's Paw while leveling--it's for monks-only too.

Community

Bashiok, the community lead for Diablo III, is a rare with his own achievement: Bashanishu. This achievement requires the player to damage Bashiok with Rakanishu's Blade, found after completing the Shrine of Rakanishu event in the Act II Oasis, which is a similarly tricky encounter. Diablo II players will remember Rakanishu also as the first Lightning Enchanted boss in the game, showing how resistance gear is useful.

Not to be outdone, World of Warcraft community manager Zarhym has a popular spawn, and there's even a thread about it.

Elitist Jerks: Someone got frustrated by the banhammer too much at Elitist Jerks and named an achievement dedicated to killing elites after the popular theorycrafting site.

It's not specifically a Warcraft reference, but a neat community Easter Egg is Developer's Hell, a dungeon that has all the Diablo III staff wandering about as zombies. Killing Jay Wilson, the Game Director of Diablo III, rewards the Feat of Strength Smash! Jay, Smash! There's also the Quality Well, which features the undead QA team. WoW has done some similar staff tributes with Lake Dumont in Feralas and The Assurance in Stormwind, a ship filled with members of the Burning Crusade Testing and QA teams.

Diablo I and II References in WoW

Vanity Items

Tyrael's Charger was a reward for participating in WoW's Annual Pass, which also rewarded players who signed up for 12 months of WoW with free Diablo III and beta access. This item is no longer available.

Triune Amulet references one of the cults in Sanctuary, which posed as a peaceful organization yet served the Prime Evils. It's fitting that this item drops from Scarlet Monastery, another example of religion gone bad.

Weapons

Staff of Jordan, Sash of Jordan, Grand Staff of Jordan: References to the Stone of Jordan, one of the most important items in Diablo II, which was used to socket items when no quests were available. They were collected in stacks and used as a form of currency.

Doombringer: it's lacking good stats, but it's named after Doombringer, a two-handed sword with great stats in all three Diablo games.

The Ziggler: this low-level BoE dagger references The Diggler from Diablo II: LoD, a dirk effective in early levels too.

The Needler could be a reference to the Halo weapon or The Needler from Diablo I.

Heaven's Light: named after Heaven's Light from Diablo II, one of two unique Mighty Scepters in the game.

Grim Reaper: named after Grim Reaper war scythe from Diablo II: LoD, which also was a weapon that was best at lower levels with a damage proc.

Gargoyle's Bite is a low-level BoE with additional armor, named after Gargoyle's Bite from Diablo II, a winged harpoon with life leech.

Locations

Stone Cairn Lake in Elwynn Forest is a lake with an island at the center that has five stones arranged around a memorial. This is most likely a reference to the Five Cairn Stones, an area in Diablo II where you open a portal to Tristram in Act I.

Cow King's Hide is a reference to the Secret Cow Level, the Moo Moo Farm, in Diablo II, which contained Hell Bovines and the Cow King.

One of the loading screens for WoW has "There is no cow level" as a tip.

Tristam Legguards is named after Tristram, one of the most important locations in all Diablo games.

NPCs

Kaganishu, a kobold in Borean Tundra, is a play on Rakanishu from Diablo II. Similar to the Diablo boss, the nearby NPCs will scream out his name in all caps in combat.

Razorclaw the Butcher in Shadowfang Keep references the iconic early boss of the same name in Diablo I, brought back as the Act I boss in Diablo III: The Butcher.

Maiden's Anguish, formerly used by rogues to brew poison, references Andariel, the Maiden of Anguish. She was the first act boss in Diablo II and had a nasty Poison Spray ability.

Wirt's Third Leg is named after Wirt, an annoying vendor in Diablo I who would only sell you one expensive item--after you paid 50g to view it. His leg was amputated and replaced with a wooden leg after an attack on his village. In Diablo II, Wirt is dead and his corpse has a ton of gold (for taking all that money in Diablo I) as well as his leg, which is used to open the Secret Cow Level. In Diablo III, you'll need to buy Wirt's Bell as one of the steps to access the new secret level, Whimsyshire.

4.3 launched this week; it's time for another guide to gearing up in a new patch. As usual, this guide does not aim to provide a BiS set of heroic Dragon Soul gear for each class and spec; rather it analyzes the new loot in the context of current options for several different playstyles.

There's two notable new ways to acquire gear: Looking for Raid and expanded Valor Point loot tables.

Looking for Raid: Players can now queue up as a group or by themselves to join a 25-man raid. These raids will not have a lockout and they will drop tier 13, although the stats will be lower than a normal or heroic 25-man. The LFR system operates much like the current dungeon finder and even minimizes the raid itself, splitting it in half, so players can only queue for half of an instance at a time. Players need a minimum ilvl of 372 to be eligible to queue.

Valor Points: While players cannot purchase Tier 13 pieces with Valor Points, the vendors sell ilvl 397 items for practically every slot. Those that aren't covered by points are covered with new BoE craftables. The idea is to have Valor Point gearing become an alternative path to normal-mode gearing.

This guide covers the following types of loot:

LFR (384-390) / Normal (397-403) / Hardmode Dragon Soul(410-416)

End Time, Hour of Twilight, Well of Eternity (378)

New craftables (397)

Valor Point rewards (397)

Normal/Hardmode Firelands (378-397)

4.2 badge gear--now purchased with Justice Points (378)

Select rewards from reputation, old craftables, and instances

There's some ilvl overlap between 4.2 and 4.3 gear--we included relevant 4.2 items so you can determine if its worth farming some new gear or not.

As LFR requires ilvl 372, you'll need to have more than just gear from Troll Heroics (353)--getting gear from Firelands, the new dungeons, and Justice Point rewards will help. (And you can always inflate it with the new PvP gear--but, that's not ideal in most cases for actually performing well.)

MMORPG.com Interview with Rob Foote about Mists of Pandaria

During BlizzCon this year, we had the chance to sit down with Rob Foote, Senior Game Producer on World of Warcraft. Rob deals mostly with the art team, but as all producers can tell you, he knows quite a bit about the design as a whole surrounding Blizzard’s latest expansion: Mists of Pandaria. We set out a few difficult questions to Rob, but he was pretty apt to answer them, and we think you’ll like the outcome.

MMORPG.com: The very first thing we asked? Pandaria… Pandarens… why?

Rob Foote: They’ve been something we’ve wanted to do for a long time, especially artistically. Ever since Warcraft III, people were drawn to them. We started on the model five years ago, and it just sat there in the archives. Cataclysm was over and we wanted something different, and Pandaria made a lot of sense because the Pandas are so “big” thematically that they overshadowed the “big bad”. And we really wanted to get into a sort of Asian-influenced theme.

MMORPG.com: Was there a conscious decision to go with an Asian slant, considering the massive Asian market that WoW has?Rob Foote: The simple fact that everyone’s on the same version now, from a technological standpoint is really incredible. Having to support all those regions, and just, get everything working like that has been a milestone. I don’t think however that we went at Pandaren for any other reason that saying, “We like these guys, they’re cool.” Plus with an Asian-themed expansion, there’s just so much to draw from and bring into WoW from all of Asia. Early Nightelf stuff sort of hinted at that kind of tone, but we really see Pandaria as a chance to really dive into it. I do think Asian cultures will dig it, but we fully expect every region to really be down with it. It’s iconic, you know?

MMORPG.com: For the art team, how did you approach designing the Monk? I think everyone has their own ideas on what that class should be like, so how do you sit down and put it to work?

Rob Foote: The Monk made the most sense once we really settled on designing the Pandaren. It’s very funny, because first was just using Pandaria. Then it was, can we make them a playable race? And then we asked, how about making a new class? Once we realized that we could pull it off in one expansion, we looked at a lot of references, like Kung Fu movies for one. It’s a very distinct feel. The Brew Master has the Drunken Stance, and it opens up a whole slew of new animations. In fact, the entire class is new animations. In other classes, you may have about ten spells all using the same basic character animation with just a different effect. With the monk, everything looks different and every move has its own unique animation. We want the Monk to feel distinct from every other class, and the fighting class style is how we do this. No auto-attack and all of that really play into making them unique.

MMORPG.com: Will the art team have free will with the new Pet System? Can you just go nuts designing new pets now, or is it more restrained?

Rob Foote: Well, we’re trying really hard to make sure every single pet in the game already is able to fight come launch day. They all share the same animation rig, so we’ll be able to animate them all really easily. Plus the combat is turn-based so we can focus on making all of these cool skills for different pets. Some may share a lot of them, but expect the ones that come post-launch to have their own unique skills. Oh, and that Murkablo all BlizzCon attendees got? He’ll be fighting too.

MMORPG.com: How does the Talent System 2.0 impact the art side of the team?

Rob Foote: Oh man… there’s so much work created for us. There’s a whole new UI to the thing, plus all of these new icons, new spells and effects. But really, since we have a lot of it in place already, we’re now just polishing it, and we’ll adjust it based on feedback from the beta whenever it gets rolling.

MMORPG.com: Do you think it may be simplifying the Talents too much though?

Rob Foote: That’s a fair question and I can see why people are worried. But we think of it as though it’s taking away the meaningless 1%, 2%, 3% stat boosts and giving players some truly interesting choices to make. You won’t have these cookie-cutter builds based on the min-maxer’s idea of what’s best for what dungeon. Like Diablo III, we think that the new talent system may scare people at first as it seems like there are less choices to make, but really it’s now about making sure those choices matter. It will add a lot more character customization, and I’m not talking just stats, but how your entire character plays. That’s a good thing.

MMORPG.com: The PR guy is wrapping us up, so I guess that’s it for us, Rob. Thanks for taking the time out of the insanely busy show to chat with us.

Rob Foote: My pleasure guys! Thanks for the good questions.

New WoW TCG Dungeon Packs

The World of Warcraft Trading Card Game is releasing three new dungeons for you to explore and reclaim. Form a party with two friends to take on Lord Godfrey, Scarlet Commander Mograine, and Vanessa Van Cleef. You don't need a pilot for the Dungeon Deck. The deck plays itself! You can customize the Dungeon Deck for difficulty and your hero will level up as you gain experience. Spend those experience points improving your deck and adding cards. So, group up and strike a blow to the enemy. For the Horde! For the Alliance! For the Monsters!

Shadowfang Keep

“Weakness… that is all you have managed to show me. Genn, you and those other disgusting mongrels that plague Gilneas, I sought death before I would serve you again. Enter the Banshee Queen, Sylvanas. You showed your true nature when you allowed Crowley to leave with his life, and so I took yours instead. You would do well to remember all that I have done, but if you still dare to enter my keep, all you will find is the lonely silence of death.” – Lord Godfrey

Scarlet Monastery

“Can you not see it, brothers and sisters? There is but one way to wipe the Scourge from the face of Azeroth. The Scarlet Crusade offers you the protection that you so desperately desire, and if you will pledge yourself to us, surely we will reach our ultimate goal. Defy us, and you will be dispatched in a blaze of golden light unlike any you have ever witnessed. My father, known to many as the Ashbringer, one of the most powerful paladins ever to walk the path of the Light, fell to my hand. What hopes could you possibly have, if even he could not stand against us?” – Scarlet Commander Mograine

The Deadmines

“Lies, greed, and deception—these are the things that my father stood against. For years, he worked tirelessly, helping to rebuild your devastated city, and what thanks did he or anyone else get for it? Nothing. What choice did they have but to turn on those who the crown favored to get payment, one way or another? Fate, it would seem, has led me down this path. Even with the murder of my father, your foolish attempts to destroy the Defias have been in vain. I am, now more than ever, my father’s daughter, and the Defias Brotherhood will rise once more…” – Vanessa Van Cleef

Treasure Pack

The Dungeon Decks are supported by the Dungeon Deck Treasure Pack. Loot equipment, allies, abilities, and epics from these nine-card treasure chests. Every card is a foil! You'll find the dungeon bosses in tournament-legal card form. Cookie, Mograine, Godfrey, and Vanessa Van Cleef are just some of the allies you'll be able to recruit. You'll also find many cards that support your multiplayer dungeoneering experience as well as your one-on-one tournament duels. And for your World of Warcraft Cataclsym players out there in computerland, each Treasure Pack could hold one of these three Loot cards: the Wasteland Tallstrider mount, Fool's Gold item, and Landro's Lichling pet. There are 60 cards total to collect (30 common, 15 uncommon, 9 rare, and 6 epic), so start your dungeon crawl today!

Artwork Gallery

Vanessa Van Cleef

Lord Godfrey

Alexandros Mograine

Defias Watcher

High Inquisitor Whitemane

2011 Pumpkin Contest Winners

The winners of this year's pumpkin-carving contest have been chosen -- and they're monstrously spectacular. We'd like to thank everyone who participated this year, and we can't wait to see your mad scientist skills in action again next time around. Check out all of the creepy, incredible, and creative winning pumpkins here.